A Gift to You – The 12 Days of Adoption

Tags

adoptee, adoption, celebrate, Christmas, discover, family, friends, Holidays, wounded, writing

NOTE: Once again, I’m immersed in writing a novel, therefore, I’m republishing one of my favorite posts from the past. A reminder of what I appreciate, a song of gratitude. Adoption is a mixed blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. Here’s wishing you and yours a beautiful holiday season!

With much affection, Elaine

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An Adoptee’s Song:
“The Twelve Gifts of Adoption”

With Christmas and Hannukah seasons upon us, music fills the air. From the radio, Mall Muzak or live musicians, we often hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” In your imagination, listen to the melody… then read with an open heart as this ADOPTEE offers a different take on a familiar song…

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on life through adoption colored glasses. Please let us know what you’re most grateful for this holiday season!

 

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Adoption: Still my “Something”

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, discover, empower, healing, separation, wounded

Note from Elaine: I continue to write adoption stories. Clara Jordan, heroine of my recent suspense novel All the Wrong Places, travels from Virginia to New Mexico hoping to locate an unknown birthmother. Instead of finding roots, she falls in love with a two-timer named Henry, a sly character who betrays her. She runs further into trouble as she searches petroglyphs for traces of a mother she’s never known. All the Wrong Places is available from http://www.pocolpress.com or from Amazon. My novel-in-progress, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, takes our protagonist to the shore temple of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu, India. Participating in NaNoWriMo, I plan to finish the first draft this month. Stay tuned!

 

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It’s been said that trauma is not a mystery, that it attaches itself to you in a way that’s hard to undo. My story, as related in The Goodbye Baby, offers living proof. Being an adoptee has added melodrama to my life, created a passion for writing, and ultimately inspired me to take off the masks and to discover who I really am.

Though I was fortunate enough to land in an adoptive family who loved and cherished me, it could not make up for losing that first “mother connection.” My birth mother and I said goodbye before I started first grade, and I waited 38 years for her to come back into my life. I was deeply wounded by the separation.

My struggles have been with feeling abandoned, isolated, and rejected. I’ve worried for years that I will be misunderstood and that I’m simply not good enough- as a daughter, a friend, a partner, a mother, or even as a human being.

With my infant son in Greece

Because of being adopted, I felt small and insignificant. Probably because adoption wasn’t something my family discussed, my negative assumptions became deeply embedded. Throughout my adult years, I accomplished a great deal, but in my mind, I was never admirable. Harmful pangs of inadequacy took root and shaped my outlook, my decisions, my disastrous romantic choices.  Until I re-read my diaries, I never realized that I myself had invented the self-damaging myth.

How did I deal with my adoption-induced complexes? My adoptive parents had to raise a delinquent teenager who drank excessively, stayed out too late and attracted bad boyfriends. As I grew older, I tended to be an over-achiever: running nine marathons to lower my finishing time, yet always “keeping score” and endlessly coming up short.

Thirty years ago, when I first started to write about my adoption, the title of my book was Reunions. My plan was to meet both my biological parents and write about finding the missing puzzle pieces. I met my original parents, but the reunions were not what I hoped for.  The pieces were in place but the puzzle remained. Only writing The Goodbye Baby completed the picture.

After both sets of parents died, I found that looking into the past gave me the wisdom to see where I’d been and how to go forward.

 

 

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What my adoption has taught me is that the world reflects my inner reality, that my happiness or unhappiness depend on my actions and not on outside forces. I’ve learned that it is never too late to make a fresh start.

I have always known I would be a writer. In the summer of 1962, I wrote in my diary,

“Some of this frantic recording is wasted energy. How can I have a future as a writer?…I need to find something to say.”

The theme of adoption is that “something.”

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and sneak previews of her newest novel, Clara and the Hand of Ganesha.

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Three Steps toward Gratitude

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Attitude adjustment, Daily Practice, Deepak Chopra, Gratitude, Henri Nouwen

Resentment and gratitude cannot coexist, since resentment blocks the perception and experience of life as a gift…Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions or feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. – Henri Nouwen

As we begin October, I’m counting my blessings. It’s been a year since a hiking injury resulted in a spinal fracture, and for months I thought I’d never be OK. Months of physical therapy and lots of walking have made me whole again.

But equally helpful has been practicing what Henri Nouwen calls The Discipline of Gratitude. Being out in nature with daily walking, savoring the good parts of every day, and support from wonderful friends: all of that has made a profound difference.

Santa Fe Botanical Garden offers a beautiful place to ramble.

While the issues of adoption never go away completely (You wake up in the morning and you’re still an adoptee), I’ve learned to cut through gloom by using the following tools. The first two mental routines are best practiced during a walk outdoors. The final process is to be done at day’s end.

STEPS TOWARD DEVELOPING THE DISCIPLINE OF GRATITUDE:
1. Walk your brain: This is a technique developed by my friend Beth, who leads a women’s Tuesday-morning brisk aerobic jaunt. After you’ve started walking, imagine a goal and think of five things that will move you toward accomplishing it. The goal need not be lofty: Anything from a chore you’ve put off for too long to applying for a job or writing an overdue important letter. Name your intention and concentrate on the five steps to achieve that goal. Do this throughout your 15 or 30 minute walk, and put the plan into action right away.

2. Practice the “shake it off” mental housecleaning movement: This is another technique best practiced while strolling. When you find yourself dwelling on the dark side, shake either your right or left hand out into the air, as though shooing away pesky insects.

3. Every night before falling asleep, think of five things that you’re thankful for, events of that particular day or conditions of your life in general.
Author, physician, and New Age guru Deepak Chopra maintains that “a gift resides in every moment.” By practicing the discipline of gratitude, one can learn to see those gifts, to find an opportunity behind every problem, and to walk through the darkest hours and come out on the other side.
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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. And check out her memoir The Goodbye Baby-Adoptee Diaries

Aspen Vista, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, appreciation, Comfort, Falling and Rising, healing, Life, Transformation, Wonder

As we approach the beginning of a new season, I’m adopting gratitude, celebrating health, and embracing life. If this sounds overly dramatic, let me explain…In 2017, the first day of Autumn brought a devastating hiking injury that took months to heal. That I’ve mended seems a miracle, and it fills me with appreciation for the body’s wisdom and ability to knit itself back together. In that spirit, I present one of my favorite poems…

“MYSTERIES, YES

by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.”

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Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life. Your comments are welcome!

In Pursuit of Roots

Tags

adoptee, adoption, adoption child, celebrity adoption, diary about adoption, elaine pinkerton, family histor, family roots, family tree, friends, juniper tree, the goodbye baby, wounded, writing

Dear Readers: Family matters have lately consumed me and there’s been no time to write. Enjoy this re-posting of thoughts originally published in 2012. The lack of “roots,” though I’ve come to grips with it, continues to be a challenge. If you’re an adoptee and have ever felt the need for a family tree, please send your feedback. Like other adoptees I’ve met, I’m still searching for the answers!

Last night I watched a program on public television that reminded me of being an adoptee. The emptiness and longing for a tribe of my own, a feeling I wrongly assumed I had put to rest, was back with a vengeance.

“Finding your Roots,” which featured three celebrities exploring their family trees, was all about searching to find a place where you belong, piecing together the past, and learning where and how your ancestors lived. The show was well presented and dramatized the interviewees’ journeys to discover their their true heritage.

My outsider status syndrome immediately kicked in. How fortunate, I thought, to even possess a genealogy that you could call your own. Growing up as an adoptee, I longed for years to claim a so-called “family tree.” I’d been to Italy with my birthfather Giovanni Cecchini. After our reunion, we travelled to Abruzzi, where he was born. I met my non-English-speaking cousins, aunts and uncles. Following the journey to Italy, my birthfather’s second wife (not my birthmother) helped me secure a detailed listing of paternal relatives.

With my adoptive mom’s help, I’d was able to chart out a family tree for my ancestry record, going back just a couple centuries. Those two charts were intellectual exercises, but I couldn’t relate to them.

Two family trees, but neither really fit who I was. Though I had the DNA of the biological parentage, I was shaped and molded by my adoptive parents. Rather than give in to an emotional meltdown, however, I thought long and hard about why the “Finding your Roots” program tried to break my heart. Tried but failed.

When I was young, I made up a myth about being adopted.The underlying theme was “Oh, poor me.” That was a way of reacting to everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

Juniper Tree. Everything, seemingly as fixed as the stars in the Big Dipper or the belt of the constellation Orion. However, I was not a fixed star and I could shape a new truth.

 

I decided to emulate the indomitable juniper tree. It will send roots down 25 feet in order to survive. Here’s a description from the National Park Service’s website:

“Junipers grow in some of the most inhospitable landscapes imaginable, thriving in an environment of baking heat, bone-chilling cold, intense sunlight, little water and fierce winds. Often they appear to grow straight out of solid rock.”

This is the kind of family tree that will serve me well.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Your feedback is invited!

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On the Trail Again

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, adoptive parents, anger, birthparents, Empowerment, Hiking, Injury, Santa Fe National Forest

As an adult adoptee, I’ve learned that inward healing leads to outward recovery. Along the way, I found that the obstacles in my path cause regression. Whenever life presents a new crisis, I’m thrown off balance. Because of last Fall’s serious injury, I experienced not only a physical but an emotional setback… a “pre-adoption recovery” state of mind.

After all four of my parents died, I found that looking into the past helped me move into the future.

Balance ~ that’s what I lost eleven months ago, when a hiking injury threw me totally out of commission https://tinyurl.com/yb2ruz3k. Months of physical therapy and healing techniques such as acupuncture, Feldenkrais, water aerobics, strength classes at the gym, stationary cycling and neighborhood walks helped lessen the pain from a compression fracture. However, until I faced the main culprit – anger – I would not really get better.

Why anger? I fell during a hike, something that could happen to anyone in difficult terrain. My anger was mainly aimed at myself. For taking my eyes off the tricky uphill path. For a disastrous moment of inattentiveness. For not taking an easier hike, which half of my fellow hikers had opted for on that September 22nd of 2017. My anger was about the injury itself – a compression fracture that would take months to heal and would lead to related lumbar and joint issues.

Anger is a terrible thing. Unless one deals with it, it corrodes. It can seem there is no bottom to the Canyon of Despondency and that one can never escape from this negative emotion. Until I admitted that unresolved issues about adoption were the root of my unhappiness, I was doomed to be under the cloud of angry, hurtful emotions. Only when I looked the demons in the eye could I begin to recover.
I had to admit my sadness that I did not grow up in a biologically related family
Only after meeting my biological parents, (who were not “parent material”) did I fully realize how lucky I was to have been adopted. After five years of being shuffled about in foster care, I landed in a forever home. Adoption adds so much to a child’s life: parents who chose her (or him), security and stability, a room of ones own. But it also takes away: blood ties, growing up with people who share your DNA, a family tree that is connected to you. As a baby, you, the adopted one, resided for nine months in your mother’s womb; you were connected at a primal level.

When I was adopted at age five, which I describe in The Goodbye Baby-Adoption Diaries – I was afraid to ask questions. Instead, I grew up longing to know where I came from, why I was relinquished. Years later, I felt I’d answered the questions and silenced the demons. With my injury, however, the old anger crept back in. Only when I acknowledged my anger and worked to release it did I start to mend. I forgave everything and everybody, including myself. Last week I ended my 11-month layoff. from hiking. With my neighbor Joalie, I hiked up the Tesuque Trail in Santa Fe National Forest to a beautiful lookout point. Because I’d cleaned out my feelings of anger and resentment, the physical knots in my back left me. Being out of pain and back in touch with nature was an incredible reward.
What I learned from my injury and long, slow recovery was the importance of releasing anger. Perhaps it took the injury to make the lesson sink in. I can recommend the following. Do not take a fall, but instead spend time with your inner self to discover who you really are. YOU are worth it!

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption and life. Guest bloggers with adoption-related stories are invited to inquire. If you’ve ever had an injury that served up a life lesson, we’d like to hear your story.

Adoptee feels at home in Ukraine

Tags

adoptee, Babi Yar, Cathedrals, Dneiper River, Europe, Gardens, Hope, Opera House, Parks, Travel, Trees, Ukraine

St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its 13 glimmering domes are visible from all over the city.

Good to be back!
I’ve just returned from an unforgettable journey: 11 days sailing up the Dneiper River in the mid-section of Ukraine. The largest European country, Ukraine is a beautiful, fertile land known as “the breadbasket of Europe.” This was a memorable trip filled with beauty and history, much of that history quite sobering. “Ukraine” means “border,” and the unique position of the eastern country of Europe has shaped its destiny. The Russian empress Catherine II annexed Ukraine in the 18th century, but, under Nikita Kruschev, in 1954, it became its own country in 1954. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the far eastern edge of Ukraine became increasingly unstable. A large part of this “edge territory” is Russian-speaking. However, it is part of Ukraine. The “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014, a statement of Ukranian pride, resulted in violent deaths in the center of Kiev, the country’s capital.

My travel buddy and I decided on Ukraine while it was still a possible destination. But this is a post about the bright side of Ukraine, not its struggles. There is much to learn, much to admire. In Viking River Cruise style, we sailed mostly at night and explored cities and countryside by day. Our first port was Odessa, built on the site of an ancient Greek colony. Many cultures settled here – Crimean Tartars, Turks, Russians and Germans. Our ship docked, and we spent several days tooling about the city, admiring its elegant Baroque buildings, elaborate facades and balconies, tree lined boulevards. The variety of huge old trees (chestnut, poplar, acacia, linden) rivaled the architecture. Roses of brilliant hues rule the city’s parks and gardens. We spent time going up and down the Potemkin steps, mostly by funicular.

One night I went to the magnificent rococo opera house for a production of “Swan Lake.” Other highlights were the Odessa catacombs and the vast Akkerman Fortress, a 13th century citadel.

We made our way north, visiting Kherson and Zaporozhye. The Island of Khortitsa, former stronghold of the Cossacks, was another highlight, including modern-day Cossacks performing acrobatic feats on horseback. Their athleticism and commanding style was thrilling to observe.
After more village and city visits, we ended up in Kiev, capital of Ukraine. St. Sophia Cathedral was a highlight of this magnificent city. Hard to say whether it is more impressive on the outside, with its thirteen gold domes, or the inside with towering gilded and mosaic rotunda ceilings. The final tour was through Jewish Kiev and included “Babi Yar,” the site of WWII massacres. We also went to Podyl, one of the oldest synogogues in the city. The journey ended on an upbeat note, as Podyl included a school. Children preparing for summer camp were playing outdoors, a fitting symbol of hope for the future.

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Join adoptee/author Elaine Pinkerton every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life. Your comments are invited. If you’d like to contribute a guest post related to the adoption theme, please contact her through this website.

 

 

 

Lessons of the Labyrinth

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, adoptee restoration, birthparents, labyrinth, recovery

“The end is the beginning,” – T.S. Eliot
Have you ever felt blindsided by life’s events? The deaths of people closest to me, all

The Labyrinth dates back 6,000 years.

happening in just a few years, was nearly unbearable. My adoptive parents, birthparents and husband passed away. How could I go on living? Did I even deserve to? In 2007, following the losses, I built a spiral walking path in my back yard and so it happened that the Labyrinth gave me a way.
The simple act of walking in to the center and then back out, helped clear my mind and reset my emotions. The labyrinth, though profound, is also very simple. When you come to the center of the spiral path, you reverse directions and walk back out.
In my case, the rhythm of that slow walking, combined with breathing deeply and feeling the air around me, gradually changed sadness to something like thoughtfulness. The sharp, ragged pain went away, and a feeling of acceptance took over. Through the days, weeks, months, and years, the labyrinth has been a way for me to tap the inner wisdom that is all too easy to ignore.
So powerful an influence was the labyrinth that I studied with Lauren Artress,
President and Founder of Veriditas, The Voice of the Labyrinth Movement. I read her books on the labyrinth, became a labyrinth facilitator, and hosted walks for friends in my own spiral path.
When I “went public” with my adoption story in The Goodbye Baby: Adoptee Diaries, I wrongly assumed that I’d solved the riddle of my adoption. I’d put my heart and soul into exposing my adoptee past. Through writing the book, I was finally able to forgive myself for a lifetime of oversensitivity about being an adoptee. In retrospect, I accepted the fact that reunions with both of my birthparents, while not a total failure, were not what I’d hoped they would be. I learned to accept even that. In the dealing with adoption department, I was done, finished, complete.
A friend will ask me if I’m “cured” or “over” the issues of adoption. The answer is “Maybe” or “Sometimes.” Like life itself, dealing with adoption is a work in progress. Thanks to walking the labyrinth, I am better able to recognize the negative adoption-induced feelings that come back to haunt. I have learned that those emotions are like the weather, ever-changing. Behind the clouds, sunshine awaits.
That said, I am not sure that one ever lets go of the “adoptee” status. For me, it is who I am. Of the hundreds of adoption stories I’ve read, it is as integral as the color of ones eyes. It doesn’t go away. So, while not “cured,”  I am now “accepting.”
Much of my life was shadowed by an underlying victim mentality. Now, I feel that obstacles forged an inner strength I’d lacked and made me more who I am. I have come to regard being adopted as a gift, not a curse. In this journey toward wholeness and self-acceptance, nothing has been a better teacher than the labyrinth.

The Labyrinth brings Clarity and Peace. In 2008, Elaine became a certified Labyrinth Facilitator.

Adopting Life in the Slow Lane

Tags

Acceptancetion, adoptee, adoptee restoration, aging, Friendship, healing, Hiking, Injury, Railroad Tracks, Rails to Trails, Santa Fe Southern

Last Fall, I went from being physically fit to feeling 100 years old…

I expected to be much better by now. It’s been eight months since the hiking accident that laid me low. On September 22 of 2017, I lost my footing and fell on my back into the Nambe River. Then, with the help of friends (they were further ahead on the slippery uphill riverbank but quickly responded to my shouts for help) I was able to stand. They fished me out of the Nambe River, where I’d landed on boulders, and walked me a torturous three miles from forest to parking lot. Next stop, the Emergency Room, where it was declared “No broken bones.” I was told to get physical therapy, which I did twice weekly. After two months, I was worse than ever. Finally, my doctor ordered an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). Voila! There it was: a compression fracture in my lower spine. I opted against surgery, instead letting the vertebra heal naturally. The neurosurgeon told me the vertebra would take several months to mend on its own. I fully expected that I’d bounce back. After all, I was one who’d endured injuries from nine marathons and years of skiing. Surely I would improve with time and physical therapy.
Instead, the months dragged on and I got worse. My back had a mind of its own. The lumbar region rearranged itself (for lack of a better way to describe the situation) and I developed a pinched nerve. Help!…Was there no end in sight? I’d tried every therapy in the book, and fitness still eluded me.
I’ve had to say goodbye to the old ME and realize that with age comes much, much longer healing time. Gone are the days of hiking to Spirit Lake, Deception Peak and Santa Fe Baldy. Or even Atalaya, Picacho Peak and Sun Mountain. All of these are favorites of Santa Feans, and they used to be mine as well.
Whether I like it or not, now begins a new normal. Maybe not forever, but at least in the near term. I’ve been limited to routes that have little up and down. One such discovery is the trail that goes along the railroad tracks for the Santa Fe Southern. The line used to run from Lamy to Santa Fe. It is now defunct, but the tracks remain. Better known as “Rails to Trails,” it is-conducive to peaceful rambles. It’s also a popular byway for mountain bikers. Last Saturday, my friend Joalie and I walked the Rails to Trails for half an hour before seeing anyone else.
Finally, another traveler. It turned out to be Hope Kiah, a friend from long ago. Hope was my first webmeister. We’d met in the 1980s, a time when I promoted the first edition of Santa Fe on Foot, a guidebook that is still in print. Having a website then, long before everyone had gone online, was a big deal. Hope, who was riding a super-cool electric bicycle, was as amazed to see me as I was to see her. We stopped and chatted. It had been years. A wonderful reunion, out there in the middle of nowhere. The distant Sandia Mountains and high desert all around us, we caught up on our lives before she motored on to her home, some ten miles south and Joalie and I walked the mile back to our car. Life in the slow lane has its gifts.

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on the world as seen through adoption-colored glasses. She is currently writing a sequel to her latest novel All the Wrong Places. Your feedback is always welcome.

An Afternoon of Music

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Bach, Baroque Era. Handel, Music Appreciation, Piano, Piano students, Scarlotti, Soiree

When I was adopted at age five, I went from being “nobody’s child” to being the daughter of an esteemed college professor and his wife. My brother Johnny and I were given every advantage that my hard-working parents could afford. Looking back across the decades, I feet that though we weren’t extremely wealthy, the cultural advantages of growing up in such a family were great. Mine was a “rags to riches” story, and though my adoptive parents, Richard and Reva, passed away decades ago, hardly a week goes by that I don’t think of them. I’m grateful for having been featured on my Dad’s “book TV” program at the University of North Carolina, for dance and drama lessons, and most of all, for piano lessons.

Because I loved playing the piano, I fully intended to continue lessons. Life, however, took me in other directions. It took me away from piano playing. I became the mother of two sons, and I began to devote time and energy to marathon running. Training involved running 30 to 80 miles a week, leaving no time to practice piano. I felt that without practice, I was wasting my piano teacher’s time. On the afternoon of what would be my last lesson, I had to tell Mrs. McHugh that I was quitting.

Because I had never stopped loving piano music, it’s been particularly joyous to take a music history course. from my friend and neighbor Fred Kronacher. Fred is an accomplished pianist and dedicated teacher. He is author of a fascinating memoir: Piano Variations~ A Musical Odyssey of Self Discovery. (More about that later.) He also teaches classes on music history and appreciation. Last Sunday’s class on the Baroque Era was splendid. To a group of a dozen, Fred illuminated musical highlights of Scarlotti, Handel and Bach, all of whom were born in 1685. Fred’s classes are entertaining as well as illuminating. He plays the piano throughout; He also plays cd recordings. We learn about the life and times of the Italian and German musical greats of the Baroque Era. It is a delicious medley.

Before our break, we are treated to a recital by one of his star pupils, a seven-year-old Chinese student named Stephanie. Dressed in a baby blue kimono, the poised young girl treats us to “Plum Blossoms.” After the mini-concert, we break for refreshments.. The treat of this afternoon, in addition to black coffee, is exquisite bread pudding. Hearkening back to the European influences in his life, virtuoso Kronacher is also an superb baker.

Fred’s memoir Piano Variations is great fun to read. It comprises vignettes about his piano students, mostly children. The stories of their challenges and triumphs are engaging, as varied as the young students themselves. In the introductory chapter, Fred says “To light the lamp in the soul of one’s neighbor is a privilege not given to everyone. A good teacher, once himself ignited, may pass the flame to another.” If I’d had him as a teacher during my formative years, I know that despite life’s interruptions, I would still be playing the piano.

If one cannot be a musician, perhaps the next best thing is being an appreciator of music. If you live in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, please be advised that Mr. Kronacher is accepting new piano students. For music aficionados, there will be opportunities to hear him lecturing before selected operas this summer at Santa Fe Opera. In August, he will be presenting a seminar on all five operas of the 2018 season.
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Anyone interested in learning more about this Santa Fe musician and teacher, feel free to contact him at fredkpiano@gmail.com

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Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for musings on adoption and life.